THE PREMIER’S LETTER

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 1008, 29 September 1903, Page 3

THE PREMIER’S LETTER

TO THE TIMES,

REPORTERS HUNGRY FOR COPY

’* per Press Association. Wellington, last night,

On Friday last a cablegram from London convoyed information that Mr Soddon had written a long letter to the Times on the subjoct of the New Zealand Conciliation and Arbitration Act. The text of the lottor is now available. In it ho replies at considerable length to tho statement made in communications to the Times by its ! Now Zealand correspondent in regard to the working of the Act. In the course of tho letter ho says :— Referring to the dissatisfaction assortod by your correspondent to exist in regard to decisions of the Arbitration Court, there is most certainly no general or widespread dissatisfaction. Hero and there employers express themselves as disappointed. Now and then workers utter growlings of displeasure. This must be, in the very nature of things. When an employer loses ho is dissatisfied. When tho worker fails to gain his point he in his turn is displeased ; but there never was a tribunal whoso decision was hailed by the losing sido with satisfaction. Can an employor who wishes to pay 6s a day to his workmen feel overjoyed when the Court orders him to pay 7s day ? He is of course dissatisfied On tho other hand tho workman whose application for a rise in pay has boon refused by the court is in his turn dissatisj'fied, and if so there will probably be among mombors of his Trade Union some loud voicod persons who will make violent spoochcs, instantly caught up and sont abroad ad nausoum by press reporters. Tho Promier also discussed tho caso in regard to tho famous Auckland furniture trade dispute, pointing out that tho whole misunderstanding arose out of tho construction to bo ’placed on tho word “ incompotont ” as. applied to a workman, and that the ruling of the Arbitration Court in tho matter enormously strengthened its position. Ho then, after pointing to the groat advance mado by tho colony of fate years, says that scarcely a day passes but somo industrial union of employers is registered under tho Arbitration Act to meet more fully tho earlier organisation of the workors’ unions. Yet utterances of dissatisfaction aro confined either to those whom tho Act has compelled to do justice to thoir work-peoplo or to the narrow fringe of failures in trade unionism, who try to got a little brief notoriety by supplying material to newspaper reporters over hungry for copy